Sitting 5½ games out of first place in the division and five games out of the second wild-card spot, the Indians on Aug. 12 fielded a starting lineup whose bottom third looked like this:
Zach Walters, Chris Dickerson and Tyler Holt.
Combined home runs and RBI this season: two and six.
Is this any way to get to October baseball?
While you were spending the last couple weeks rightfully fretting about the Indians’ shaky starting rotation — Corey Kluber and the Klubettes — a funny thing happened to the Indians’ starting lineup.
It disappeared.
Michael Bourn is on the disabled list. Nick Swisher is on the disabled list (your punchline here). David Murphy is on the disabled list, and Asdrubal Cabrera was traded (your punchline here).
Four of the nine players in the Indians’ starting lineup Aug. 12 started this season in the minor leagues: the above three and Jose Ramirez. Two of the four — Dickerson and Walters — not only were minor leaguers at the start of the season, they were minor leaguers for other organizations.
I know what you’re thinking.
Where’s Elliot Johnson when we need him?
Meanwhile, the Tigers are suddenly and stunningly looking deliciously vulnerable, to the extent that on a team that boasts the last three Cy Young Award winners, their scheduled starter Aug. 12 was Buck Farmer.
Buck Farmer!
Seriously.
Justin Verlander is hurt. So is Anibal Sanchez. David Price’s ERA in his first two starts for Detroit is 4.30, and Rick Porcello, who is 13-6 as a starter, had to be used out of the bullpen Aug. 10.
The Tigers are a mess. Right now anyway. They went into their game Aug. 12 having lost five of their last six games, two of them walkoff victories wins by their opponents.
And now what was once a Cadillac starting rotation now includes Buck Farmer.
Could the division actually come down to a late September ninth-inning mano a mano matchup between Buck Farmer and Tyler Holt?
Stay tuned.
Of more immediate concern for the Indians is two-thirds of their starting outfield is currently on the disabled list. The news on Murphy on Aug. 12 was not good. An MRI confirmed he has a strained right oblique. The Indians’ medical people project him to miss four to five weeks, which means he’s going to miss most of the rest of the season.
Four weeks takes it to Sept. 9. Five weeks takes it to Sept. 16. The Indians’ last regular-season game is Sept. 28.
The minor-league seasons will be over by then, so Murphy will have nowhere to go on an injury rehab. So we may have seen the best, if not the last, of Murphy this season.
Manager Terry Francona said by the weekend Bourn could be activated off the disabled list, but at this point, the news that Bourn is close to getting over his latest hamstring injury is just another way of saying he’s one day closer to his next hamstring injury.
All of which means Michael Brantley, who is having a monster season, continues to have to do the heavy lifting for two missing outfield teammates.
It also means this: Dickerson starting in left field and Holt in right field Aug. 12, in the heat of a race for postseason berths.
In addition to Dickerson and Holt, Walters, who Aug. 12 started as the DH, the 12th different player to fill that role in a Francona lineup this season — an astonishing stat in itself for a contender — might eventually become major-league regulars.
But they aren’t now, and the fact they comprise one-third of the Indians’ starting lineup in a key part of the season does not bode well for a team Francona seems to be holding together with bubble gum and bailing wire.
“We put the lineup up, and we expect to win with whoever is in the lineup,” said the indefatigably optimistic skipper, when asked how comfortable he is fielding a lineup with two of three outfield spots being manned by backups.
“Whoever is in the lineup that night, we expect them to help us win. That’s the mentality. You don’t assess what’s missing. You look at what you have and do the best you can to win.”
So maybe it will become a battle of attrition.
Even the first-place Royals — how weird does that sound? — have had some injuries, although they went into their game Aug. 12 with a record since July 22 of 16-3, so they are attritioning quite well, thank you.
It’s mid-August.
There is a division to be won. It’s all hands on deck.
That means you, Buck Farmer.
JIngraham@
News-Herald.com
@JITribeInsider